Lawmaker: Pro-North Koreans in Japan could cast ballots in S. Korean polls

SEOUL, July 22 (Yonhap) -- Tens of thousands of pro-North Korean residents in Japan could cast ballots in next year's presidential and parliamentary elections in South Korea, a ruling party lawmaker claimed Friday. The potential scenario raises concern among some South Koreans that North Korea could try to influence the local elections through voters who are associated with the communist country. The North has frequently called for the end of South Korea's conservative government, which took power in Seoul in 2008 with a hard-line policy toward Pyongyang. South Korea is scheduled to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in April and December, respectively. Currently, hundreds of thousands of Koreans live in Japan, many of them descendants of Koreans forcibly brought to Japan as laborers during Tokyo's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The ethnic Korean community, however, was later divided into two separate groups, one each supporting South and North Korea, respectively. The two Koreas remain technically at war since their 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. Some 50,000 North Korean sympathizers in Japan have restored their South Korean nationality, said Lee Kyung-jae, a lawmaker of the ruling Grand National Party, a step that would give them the right of suffrage in South Korean elections. In 2009, South Korea's parliament revised election law to allow South Korean nationals living abroad to cast ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections. The election watchdog confirmed that pro-North Koreans are eligible to vote in South Korean elections if they have restored South Korean nationality. The voting by North Korean residents in Japan is a sensitive issue as they are controlled by Pyongyang, said the lawmaker. Still, a senior official of the pro-North Korean association in Tokyo dismissed as groundless the looming concern that the North could try to sway South Korean elections. "Pro-North Korean residents are not interested in South Korean elections and they wouldn't bother to cast ballots even if they were instructed to vote," the official told Yonhap News Agency by phone. He said he did not have information on how many pro-North Koreans won South Korean nationality, but stressed it did not mean their ideology has changed, as they took the step for personal convenience in Japan. North Korea and Japan have no diplomatic relations. The official asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to media on the record.